Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan Premier Deposed by Dictator Bashir, Dies of Coronavirus

Sadiq al-Mahdi, former prime minister. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Sadiq al-Mahdi, Sudan’s former prime minister has died of coronavirus, according to reports from the United Arab Emirates where he was being treated.

The country’s last elected prime minster, al-Mahdi who was 84 years old, was overthrown by Gen. Omar Hassan al-Bashir in 1989. The general ruled Sudan with an iron hand until he was toppled in a popular revolution on April 11, 2019. 

Al-Mahdi is the descendant of the great Sudanese general Muhammed Ahmed ibn Abdallah, the Mahdi, who defeated the British general Charles Gordon in the great battle of Khartoum, in 1885. 

Al-Mahd’s family said the former prime minister, whose last term in office lasted from 1986 until he was toppled in 1989, died today in a hospital in the UAE, three weeks after hospitalization. He had been treated in a hospital in the Sudan before being rushed abroad.

Sudan split into two separate countries in 2011, with the new nation being called South Sudan, while Sudan retained its original name.